The Age of Oil

Age of Oil: Past – I

What are we looking at? What do we see? How do we approach this work?
This is Takayama’s art at work, posing questions, offering positions and enticing the observer to observe.
In this series we have to be alert to what is actually there not what we think is there.
Somewhere in the black plastic lies the carbon of the past. Laid down in murky soils and compressed by millions of years.

Age of Oil: Past – II

Do we see car indicator lights? Do we see eyes? How can this be either?
At first glance everything may appear to be simple but the more the considered observer contemplates then the more questions will be found. The essence of Takayama’s art is that it always appears simple but that is just the wrapper for the complex ideas contained within.
All you see came from plants and animals long dead.

Age of Oil: Past – III

And then we have the liquid forms created in these sculptures. Here we see flow and harmony, here we see shape and style, all is possessed of balance. Deeper into the form shapes emerge to tantalise imagination and sponsor perceptions.

Age of Oil: Past – IV

All we have is these, our own projections for the forms do not correspond to any reality. They are simply deep, dark, oil based plastic shapes. We are invited to see into this Age of Oil past.

Age of Oil: Present – I

We are living in the last days of oil. After a hundred years or more of selling our souls for the carbon energy store in the earth, we and it are exhausted. We gasp for air in our cities and pray for safety from floodwaters in our homes. In the Age of Oil we charged our future with the cost of our convenience and left our descendants with the bill for our selfishness.

Age of Oil: Present – II

Rising up to dominate our cultures, oil has become the fabric of our societies. We wear clothes made from it, we work on computers fashioned by it, we drive cars powered and styled by it, everywhere the dark stain has seeped into our lives. Beyond our own need the natural world has found itself covered by oil.

Age of Oil: Present – III

Seductively smooth we feel the power of this oil in our present. Flowing like sin it reflects our desires and pulls us towards its sticky promises. We are the Age of Oil Present, we are the oil worshipers.

Age of Oil: Present – IIII

We see what we want to see. We always have done and always will.

Age of Oil: Future – Digitech I

Our future is one of dreams. We talk of the sun, the wind and the water as options to oil. A more natural strategy for energy and power. But can we ever truly let go of the blackness in our hearts? Only our future will tell us of our freedom.

Age of Oil: Future – Digitech II

Whatever this future we cannot doubt we will always use oil. Perhaps more wisely, perhaps in ever smaller amounts but as the volume of consumption decreases the price value will increase making it a business to attractive to let go.

Age of Oil: Future – Changeling I

We are the human animal which formed our environment to our needs rather than shape our bodies to those environmental demands. Now we are taking control of evolution and shaping our bodies to our own designs. We have become our own extinction.

Age of Oil: Future – Changeling II

Our future is change, it is all it can be if we are to survive.

The Age of Oil is a sculpture series by Akane Takayama which looks at our relationship with fossil fuel. The work is executed in thick, heavy injection moulded plastic forms. In this density of form and purpose, there is a blackness which is not about surface but of molecular mass. In the presence of these works, we find that deep stick darkness which speaks of raw, crude oil, a tar of a palette which we fear may stick to our fingers and clothes, mat our hair and clog up our lungs if we dare to reach out and touch.

Takayama has produced these sculptures in forms which evoke specific ideas of concept and yet, on close inspection and proper consideration, we find that what we at first seem to recognise is not at all what it is we are looking at. There are four sculptures in the series covering the past, the present and the future.

The Age of Oil: Past. An almost antediluvian image, perhaps an ant like head, maybe an amphibian, certainly strange and unfamiliar. The eyes look like car indicator lights and the lines and grooves of the piece seem as though shaped in a wind tunnel. But ultimately all recognition is little more than the projection for this is simply a form made out of an oil derived substance which is intended to evoke a sense of the past. There are no car indicator lights, there is no ant or amphibian, there is just a sculpture of form in black dark plastic.

The Age of Oil: Present. This towering work immediately gives the impression of a fish rising up out of the water, a salmon perhaps. Maybe a salmon rising up through an oily, polluted sea in search of a fly. Again though, when we look closely, this is no fish that ever lived, this is just a form, a shape created to convey an idea and designed to allow our own perceptions to attach to that form.

The Age of Oil: Future – Digitech. A fluid spill captured in a moment, smoothly seeping into a form on which sits conical shapes. Perhaps a UFO? Maybe a high tech plane? Despite its smaller scale and lesser use of oil, Digitech implies something beyond the simplicity we see once we study closely. If this is a future it is one we know to be there but cannot predict.

The Age of Oil: Future – Changeling. Here we see the evolution of form but from what to what we cannot really tell.

In the heavy constituency of these works, Takayama has managed to create iconic, powerful forms. So much so that when first displayed in a gallery some low individual broke in at night and stole a piece. Maybe it is seen as a compliment that work is worth stealing but we do not see it that way.